Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

Lu Mingfei stepped onto the warm sand. The sun was setting, its last fiery red rays illuminating the sky and sea in a crimson glow.

The entrance to Nibelungen had been altered, and for a moment Lu Mingfei was unsure of his location. He found himself on a beach, which, judging from the climate, was at least in a low-latitude region. Even Odin couldn't possibly unleash such an alchemical feat spanning half the globe without leaving a trace, especially since it used the Nibelungen interface as a medium.

Lu Mingfei's mental power expanded to its limit, from the depths of the Earth's crust to the upper mantle, and up to the high altitude of the stratosphere, with no false traces in the elemental feedback.

Both the real world and the elemental world are vast chaotic systems, and the simulation of such a realistic illusion was something that even Lu Mingfei could not have imagined when he had mastered the complete laws.

He soared through the sky, reaching above the clouds. The leaden-gray sea of ​​clouds at dusk stretched out to the horizon beneath his feet. Looking up, the constellations in the sky were no different from those on Earth.

It is indeed a reality, but the sudden spatial displacement cannot be explained.

He glided close to the lower stratosphere, taking in the night view of the coastal town below. After gradually figuring out his location, he began to accelerate. In a few minutes, after estimating that he had covered about 500 kilometers, he landed directly on a building in the city below.

In the brightly lit school building, every classroom was full of people, yet it was so quiet that you could hear the scratching of pens on paper, and an occasional cough could be heard from the next classroom.

Shilan Middle School is the best school in the city, and its student body is among the best in the city. In fact, the vast majority of students have private tutors.

Lu Mingfei walked down the corridor between the buildings, observing the boys and girls through each window. The school uniforms at Shilan Middle School had changed; they were no longer high-end custom-made clothing, but rather loose-fitting long-sleeved jackets and trousers like those in other schools in the city. The classroom facilities were also outdated. Shilan Middle School's teaching facilities underwent major repairs every six months and minor repairs every month, but most of the time, replacement was the preferred method of repair. Especially before parent-teacher meetings, they made sure that parents who donated to the school wouldn't feel like their money was going into the principal's pocket when they sat in the classrooms.

Lu Mingfei looked at the projector equipment with exposed and messy wiring, the new but still old speakers, and the ancient posters of famous quotes. The faces of Newton and Confucius still bore traces of students' secondary creations, and the dents in their mustaches and glasses gleamed under the light.

There is another more obvious change: the junior and senior high school sections of Shilan Middle School were originally built together, but now only the senior high school section is visible where Lu Mingfei passed by. The original junior high school section has been replaced by a grove of trees and two dilapidated dormitory buildings. Shilan Middle School does have dormitories, but they should be of the standard of high-end apartments and are rented on a weekly basis.

Lu Mingfei finally stopped in front of a classroom and looked at the boy sitting at the desk.

The boy was staring blankly at a math problem, looking depressed. He kept swinging his legs, occasionally looking up at his classmates who were engrossed in their studies, sometimes poking holes in the test paper with his pen, and occasionally glancing very subtly at a long-haired girl in the corner. He was a complete loser.

Lu Mingfei walked into the classroom and stared at the boy for a long time. From the perspective of reality, from the perspective of elements, and from the realm of spiritual power, he confirmed again and again that the boy was indeed not a fantasy, a ghost, or a nightmare... His blood sugar was about 5.9 mmol/L, which was within the normal range for the first evening self-study session after dinner. His body temperature was 37.1℃, and his heart rate was as high as 108 beats/minute. Given that the guy's ears were a little red, it could be almost concluded that this kid was in love.

A parallel universe?

Lu Mingfei was unusually bewildered. The boy looked exactly like him, except that he had no dragon blood or other legal power.

According to the theory of dragon alchemy, timelines of different probabilities all lead to the same destination. Moreover, changes in the timeline cannot reverse life and death or alter the absolute reality of this world; most of the time, they are more like reinterpretations of reality. Based on this judgment, there shouldn't be two Lu Mingfei entities in a parallel universe, and the other Lu Mingfei shouldn't have lost his dragon bloodline.

Lu Mingfei reached out and placed his hand on the back of student Lu Mingfei. A symmetrical geometric pattern composed of triangles and four rings appeared. The power of the Golden Law briefly pierced the domain of the Dark Illumination, but no one noticed it.

Prayer and the principle of return.

This is a prayer of the Golden Law Fundamentals, one of the foundational prayers. It can heal all abnormalities, eliminate special effects, remove all mimicry, and reveal the true nature. Fundamentals interpret the Golden Law with two forces—reversion and causality. Reversion refers to the convergence of all things towards the unchanging, a kind of gravitational force in meaning.

As the light faded, there was no change in student Lu Mingfei, confirming that he was indeed a physical being.

Lu Mingfei once again uses another prayer of the Golden Law fundamentalism—the principle of causality.

The power of the Golden Law left a ring on student Lu Mingfei's body. It was a small causal aura that could reside in his body and would automatically retaliate after being attacked to a certain extent.

Fundamentalism interprets the Golden Law using two forces—regression and causality. Causality refers to the interconnectedness of all things, a kind of gravitational force between meanings.

After finishing all this, Lu Mingfei quietly left the classroom, rose into the sky again, and returned to his uncle and aunt's house along the familiar route. At this time, his uncle had not yet come home from get off work, and his aunt had gone out to buy groceries. The house was empty. Lu Mingfei briefly inspected the house from the window before leaving.

Next was the Kassel College branch in the city. The building, originally guarded by the executive department, was now an ordinary residential building, and due to its good location, the first and second floors had been converted into a supermarket. Lu Mingfei checked it over and didn't find any mixed-race individuals.

By this time, he already had a vague premonition.

He returned to the stratosphere and sped forward, covering thousands of miles in minutes. He descended below the clouds, finding familiar territory in BJ's dense road network. Passing through subway stations and tunnels, he found himself in what was once the Nibelungen, the place Jormungandr had created, now just an abandoned subway repair factory in the western suburbs. Everything that could be sold in the workshops had been emptied, and tall weeds grew between the rails and in the cracks between the stones, with white wildflowers blooming among them.

Lu Mingfei parted the wildflowers. The ground and rails that had been damaged in the battle were still intact. The only thing flowing here was time, and even the dust was forgotten in the rusty cracks.

He glanced around briefly, not lingering for long, and didn't plan to go to the Three Gorges Bronze City next, as the scenery there should be similar to this place.

This time, he crossed the ocean and headed due west, passing through the night and layers of clouds. The western sky, which was already shrouded in darkness, lit up with sunset clouds in his sight. The sun slowly rose, gradually reaching the center of the sky, and then set again in the east, finally stopping at the position of dawn.

Chicago, south of Lake Michigan, USA.

Chapter 252 The Conditions for Becoming a God

The site of Kassel College is now a state park, deserted except for a few hiking trails.

Lu Mingfei stopped by the stream. The riverbed was very clean, with water flowing among the pebbles. There were piles of withered grass and branches beside it, presumably cleaned regularly by forest rangers.

The red leaves on both sides of the river are magnificent, nestled among the hills and valleys. There is no high-speed train carrying mixed-race animals disturbing the animals in the forest, nor is there the mountaintop campus that can be vaguely seen from the foot of the mountain on a clear day.

Lu Mingfei gradually understood the situation, recalling the spying from the Arctic.

Even without going to Japan and Europe to verify, one can guess that the power of dragons does not exist in this world, nor do hybrids.

We must go to the source and find out the truth.

He ascended into the sky with a solemn expression, and a gale swept through the mountains and forests, startling all the creatures on the ground. They looked up at the sky and saw only the turbulent clouds.

Lu Mingfei traversed lakes, forests, hills, and mountains until the vegetation thinned out, and the landscape was finally replaced by ice fields and tundra.

After entering the Arctic Circle, he did not stop, but instead continued to approach the North Pole.

The closer one gets to the North Pole, the slower time becomes. This is not an illusion, nor can any illusion deceive Lu Mingfei. What is truly affected is the rule of time... In the end, everything almost freezes at a certain moment. The snowfields, icebergs, and oceans all fall into tranquility, like a still oil painting, with silvery-white snow, blue ice, and winding blue-black waterways crisscrossing in the middle.

Snowflakes hovered motionless in the air, maintaining their falling posture. Arctic foxes left tiny footprints on the snowdrifts. A tern, its destination unknown, spread its wings in the cold wind high in the sky, its flapping wings seeming to take ten thousand years.

Finally, filled with doubt, Lu Mingfei arrived at the epicenter of all this anomaly. The sky was filled with brilliant auroras—green bands of light, purple ripples, and even rare red glows—illuminating this frigid land with such brilliance that it could be described as magnificent.

Indeed, someone was waiting there. To Lu Mingfei's surprise, it was not Odin, not the unknown Dragon King, and not Lu Mingze, but himself.

Another Lu Mingfei.

Unlike student Lu Mingfei, this Lu Mingfei possessed obvious supernatural characteristics. It was not the Dragon Law or the Golden Law, but a more magnificent law, distant, ethereal, and exuding a sacred aura. In Lu Mingfei's eyes, it appeared as if this Lu Mingfei was surrounded by a halo.

“You naive genius, you’ve gone further than I imagined,” said “God Lu Mingfei.”

Upon hearing these words, Lu Mingfei's mind raced, countless possibilities flashing through his head, ultimately leading to the most likely and also the most unbelievable conclusion.

He squinted, staring directly at the intense aura emanating from the other person. After a moment of silence, he finally couldn't help but speak.

"Why you? Why me, Your Excellency... Supreme Will?"

“That is indeed my name in the ‘Borderlands’.” The Supreme Will descended from the sky and stepped onto the ice. He wore a large, thin robe, with his calves and large sections of his arms exposed, already red from the cold. In this place, which was close to minus fifty degrees Celsius, even ordinary people, including hybrids, would suffer tissue necrosis after prolonged exposure.

Lu Mingfei wasn't worried at all that He would be affected by the mere cold. A temperature difference of tens of degrees was as gentle as a cradle on a cosmic scale. What he was curious about was why the other party needed such a human avatar.

“Doubt, shock… and a deep-seated fear.” The Supreme Will nodded, his expression serene. He stretched out his arm and looked at the frozen, red skin, seemingly lost in thought. “Pain… the first physical sensation you overcame, along with fear, perished. And that is why you rose from the ashes.”

He looked directly into Lu Mingfei's eyes, and Lu Mingfei lost control, falling into a slideshow of scenes playing in his mind—his initial memories at the border, the pain that could physically cause someone to faint, all surfaced one by one.

"You were once the most ordinary of beings, hence your compassion," said the Supreme Will. "You have witnessed much suffering, some of which even aided your progress. But after a century of wielding the Law, you should understand that it was all meaningless. Your life has transcended the breadth and length limits of any being's lifetime. At a level of relative eternity, nothing that is destined to happen can affect the true Law. Do you understand...?"

"You cannot relinquish your destiny; your laws are ultimately limited."

A brilliant light shone in Lu Mingfei's eyes, reflecting his entire life: his perseverance, his spirit, his glory, his pain, his helplessness, his sins... These were the obstacles to his becoming a god. He was a being qualified to become a god. Compared to him, the King of Law and the God of Law were merely toddlers learning to walk!

"Nidhogg, is that your backup plan?"

Lu Mingfei was breathing heavily, but he still managed to ask the most important question as soon as possible.

"I have traversed the starry sky, leaving my mark in many places. I am a 'pioneer.' Become one of us, and you will understand everything. As for that child, it is no different from you in essence. I made a failed attempt at the borderlands, but Earth is entirely different; the laws here are still in their infancy." The human characteristics of the Supreme Will are disappearing, its entire body becoming crystal clear, clearly constructed of pure energy. "Go and do it. I am the one who guides the spirit of fire and that Lady of the Night. What you lost first was fear. I will help you remove your last bit of anger... Go and unify the laws, abandoning your original limitations."

"This is a world created by a closed branch of timeline. You can choose to leave, but you won't. You have two choices left—to abandon it or to succumb to it," the supreme will said slowly. "Whatever choice you make is none of my business. This is not a test, nor will it cause any harm."

After leaving these words, the embodiment of the supreme will gradually transformed into pure light, and at the same time, time resumed its flow around them.

Layers of light shimmered among the icy hills and valleys, the aurora borealis drifted slowly overhead, and snowflakes finally began to fall.

This is a real world, but it is merely a secret realm prepared for Lu Mingfei by the supreme will.

In the eyes of most people, Lu Mingfei is already unimaginably strong, yet he hasn't even touched the starting point of that level. All the demigods or schemers on this planet are vying to become gods on Earth, but all of this seems to be just trivial matters from a higher perspective.

Lu Mingfei had endured hardship and toil along the way, and he had never truly faced the question of becoming a god.

Perhaps the Supreme Will was right; it was his humanity that shaped his destiny. He persevered through so many desperate moments when he was almost ready to give up, yet he stopped there upon reaching the end. Looking back, in the years he sat on the throne, the only conclusion he pondered was—nothingness, an awe-inspiring nothingness.

If the original driving force for progress becomes an obstacle, are those people, things, and events really so easy to discard? He hadn't figured it out before, but now he had no time to wonder.

If becoming a god is a necessary sacrifice, he must make the choice, as he promised before Angers and his followers.

Chapter 253 Error

Twenty minutes before evening self-study, high school students enjoy one of their few moments of freedom. A torrential downpour begins, and the students who are eating split into several groups: some go home, some go to the cafeteria, and others buy snacks from stalls near the school gate to take back to their classrooms.

Lu Mingfei was the last one. His aunt took Lu Mingze, who had a high fever, to the hospital. His uncle had a business dinner that night and would drink until very late, so she left him a generous amount of money for dinner.

Lu Mingfei bought a sandwich and a Coke, and still had more than 20 yuan left. So, for the first time ever, he bought the latest comic magazine at a bookstall and brought it back to the literary society's activity room. He ate his sandwich and flipped through the comics. The rain outside the window was getting heavier and heavier, and large raindrops from the leaves and eaves were hitting the leaves from time to time, making it both noisy and quiet.

Lu Mingfei was bored and wondered if evening self-study would be canceled because of this. He looked out the window and saw that it was getting dark an hour earlier than usual, and he could vaguely see clear rain lines.

The members of the literary club all came from families with some money, and they all ordered deluxe meal plans for all three years of high school at the cafeteria. Of course, they wouldn't eat dinner in the activity room converted from an empty classroom. During this time, this place belonged to him alone, like the rooftop of the neighborhood.

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked at his blurry reflection. Suddenly, he felt a pang of melancholy, a sorrow without a specific source, yet genuine and heartfelt. The confusion and joys of youth are like raindrops, clear and abundant, but lacking the power of a great river flowing into the sea to reach their end.

Lu Mingfei's grades weren't bad, but they hovered in the middle to lower range. He wasn't noticed by teachers like the poor students, nor did he receive the special attention like the good students. In every aspect, he was a complete nobody.

However, Lu Mingfei himself was not very ambitious. The only time he worried about his grades was when the results came out, and the first name he would look for on the report card was the president of the literary society.

If he could get into the same school as Chen Wenwen, the chances of success seemed very optimistic, given their connections as fellow villagers, classmates, and friends... provided that he could make up for the nearly 100-point difference.

"Lu Mingfei." Someone called to him from outside the window.

Lu Mingfei had finished reading the serialized comic and was looking at the jokes in the sidebar. He turned to look out the window, frowned, and couldn't see who was calling him. Maybe one of his club members had forgotten something in the activity room.

He walked to the window again, leaned close to the glass, and saw a tall, dark figure standing in the rain, completely wrapped up. He couldn't tell what was under the raincoat, but it looked very bulky, even covering his face, which made him look suspicious.

"Hi?" Lu Mingfei shrank his neck and waved.

The figure raised its hand, waved, and slowly said, "This world is truly wonderful."

Lu Mingfei opened his mouth, not knowing what to say for a moment. This nonsensical opening was comparable to that crazy line, "The wind is even noisy today."

Should we reply with something like, "But today, the world seems to be crying"? Rather than making a meme, this situation sounds more like a conversation between two guys in a mental hospital.

Seeing that Lu Mingfei remained silent, the figure moved closer until it was within the light range of the activity room.

Lu Mingfei's eyes widened. The other person was wearing an exquisitely crafted armor cosplay outfit; judging by the workmanship, it must have cost at least tens of thousands. He was a little confused again. He couldn't make out the voice in the rain, but none of the rich guys he knew seemed to be this chuunibyou (a Japanese term for someone with delusions of grandeur)...

"Classmate? Which class are you in?" Lu Mingfei opened the window, and the wind and rain rushed in, making his eyes water.

In the blink of an eye, the window was empty, as if no one had ever stood there. Rain splashed onto Lu Mingfei's clothes, and he took a half step back, suddenly feeling a lingering fear. That's how the demons and monsters in ghost stories are; they strike up a conversation with you, and once you respond, they can break through your yang energy/protective barrier and descend from the world of demons into the world of humans.

He shuddered and quickly stopped himself from thinking about it.

"Lu Mingfei? Are you still here? Class is about to start." As Lu Mingfei was lost in thought, someone came in and said behind him.

Lu Mingfei almost jumped up, but he quickly realized that what was in front of him was a person, not a ghost—Chen Wenwen, the president of the literary society.

"Is there something on my face?" Chen Wenwen looked confused when she met Lu Mingfei's sharp gaze. She brushed aside the stray hairs on her forehead and touched her cheek.

Lu Mingfei wasn't staring at the person intentionally; he was lost in thought. Realizing his mistake, he said, "Excuse me, I saw someone outside the window. I was just checking to see who it was. What are you doing here?"